A superfan turned ‘The Last of Us’ into a beautiful TV series

‘The Last of Us’ is an exclusive ‘Sony PlayStation’ hit franchise developed by ‘Naughty Dog’ and it’s probably one of the best games i have ever played on a ‘Playstation’ console. Rich, beautiful, amazing, mind-blowing, one can keep telling how awesome this game is, it’s incredible. A certain college student and aspiring game designer Grant Voegtle has put his efforts in creating playthrough videos of ‘The Last of Us’ in an entirely different fashion. It is much like a “cinematic playthrough” of ‘The Last of Us’. These videos effectively cut the game into TV-style episodes that downplay the game’s combat elements and instead focus on the game’s engrossing story, characters, and ruined world. Voegtle’s series won’t help you find all of the game’s secret collectibles or learn how to get through the toughest battles. But you could put the first episode on your TV, show it to a friend who has never heard of ‘The Last of Us’, and get them hooked up with awesomeness without actually playing the game.

Grant Voegtle says, “I was hearing that people wanted to share the story of ‘The Last of Us’ with their family, but they just didn’t have the time to have them sit down and play the entire game. Hearing that and knowing that I could do that for people — that’s been the most motivating thing so far to keep me working on it.”

It is more like labor of love for Voegtle, who has been making ‘The Last of Us’ videos on his YouTube channels since shortly after the game was released in July 2013. “I first started doing videos when I discovered the multiplayer part of the game, i was making tips videos and stuff just a month or two after the game launched.” Voegtle actually managed to get some attention from ‘Naughty Dog’ itself with a half-hour analysis video that he made in December. A video that now has over 600,000 views.

Basically, ‘The Last of Us’ is particularly well suited to this kind of editing, these videos won’t help you beat the game, but they will help you appreciate the story. Figuring out the story is only part of the challenge, though. There’s also the matter of making sure the AI behaves the way the scene calls for, getting the game’s camera in the right place, making sure combat sequences go according to plan. That’s why each 30 to 40 minute installment of Voegtle’s series takes him an average of 20 to 30 hours of work. He’s played some parts of the game up to 100 times to get make everything look just right.

“Dozens of playthroughs, hundreds of hours, seven episodes”

He had released an episode every Friday for the first five weeks. But now he’s somewhat tired of it, indeed, even as fans are waiting for Voegtle to wrap up his series, he has already mentally moved on from ‘The Last of Us’. “I still love the game — I’ll always love it,” he says, a noticeable hint of burnout in his voice. “But I also hate it sometimes a little bit. I’m just going to take a long break from it after this.”